I hadn't seen it in years, at least not since it first came out when I was still out "making the scene" and going to a lot of the bars shown in the movie. What I didn't see then that I saw now -- it was, indeed, all I focussed on -- was how in touch the script is with what might be called the male variety of heart break. Thinking back on the film all I could remember was Vince Vaughn's posturing but the film spends a lot of time with John Favreau's sad sack lonely heart.
Can anyone think of any other movies that assay similar terrain (comedies preferable!)?
3 comments:
I saw it on your Netflix list and was happy to see that you have moved into the “medicinal cinema” stage! I love Swingers for so many reasons. First, it is one of the few great films about male friendship ( I like American Pie for that reason, too) and one of the few that accurately represents the agony, neurosis, and OCD that can set in after a break-up (i.e. Mike’s repeated phone calls), the odd comfort in dwelling in the hurt caused by that break-up, and then the unexpected and often unnoticed progression into the “over it” stage.
Unfortunately, you don’t see that experience accurately represented in films featuring either men or women. One film I love that depicts a similarly love-challenged character (Catherine Keener) and her seemingly more-successful-at-love best friend (Anne Heche) is Nicole Holofcener’s first film, Walking and Talking (also with Todd Field and Liev Schreiber). It is wonderfully subtle and often painful. Plus, it has a great soundtrack by Billy Bragg.
I love Walking and Talking.
One thing I never thought about until this last viewing of Swingers are it's several, repeated references to Reservoir Dogs. There's a poster in one of the character's apartments, they discuss the film, there's a shot lifted straight from it.
Apropos of my filmic identification with Tony Soprano or Tyler Durden as described below, the Dogs references acknowledge that other, more culturally prevalent form of male friendship in which close bonds are forged through violence and can only be approached or represented through "traditionally male" genre structures like Westerns or gangster flicks.
Swingers suggests, maybe even just hints, at the way that men map the fantasy representation over the reality of their relationships to make is socially acceptable. It's an interesting side to the film I hadn't thought of before.
Paul, your realization about Swingers reminded me of another facet of male anxiety that I think is hilariously, and, by the end of the picture, poignantly, depicted in RAISING ARIZONA.
Although I loved the film and had watched it numerous times, it wasn't until I was married and started thinking about having children that I realized that the entire story is about men coping with the idea of starting a family and the absurdity of thought and action that this anxiety creates.
For example, the convenience stores in the film aren't really convenience stores - they are other women (and actually anything a man feels he needs to give up in order to have a family). "Zac sometimes finds himself driving by multiplexes that aren't on the way home." Ed's career in law enforcement is really just a manifestation of the social norms and requirements that men feel are imposed if they commit to the whole marriage and family thing etc. etc.
But in the end, all the adventures and hair-brained antics lead Hi to realize that he really did want was he was going through the motions to attain all along. As The Stranger from THE BIG LEBOWSKI puts it:" I guess that's the way the whole durned human comedy keeps perpetuatin' itself, down through the generations, westward
the wagons, across the sands a time until-- aw, look at me, I'm ramblin' again."
As a final aside, another hilarious and insightful depiction of male anxiety - the desire that keeps you driving by the "convenience stores" that aren't on the way home - is EYES WIDE SHUT. The male mind is a fucked up place. But that's for another post at another time.
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